


Come Clean

by ScarletteStar1



Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Older Man/Younger Woman, PTSD, Trauma, age gap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:08:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25621126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteStar1/pseuds/ScarletteStar1
Summary: After the prisoner exchange on the tarmac and the ambush on the embassy in season four. . .  Carrie and Saul share a moment of grief and reflection. . .
Relationships: Saul Berenson/Carrie Matthison
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Come Clean

There’s soap he usually likes when he’s in the Middle East. It’s made with a decadent blend of coconut and olive oils and has an exotic scent of frankincense, oud, and bergamot. Someone thought to put a puck in his shower. He rubs the bar back and forth in his palms, working up a rich, sudsy lather, but the fragrance kicks him harder than Haqquani’s goons only days before.

He washes his armpits and ass and opens the shower curtain to toss the soap at the trash bin. He misses and it skips across the tile floor like a stone on a pond.

His body is ugly and strange, mottled all manner of hideous colors from scars, bruises, scrapes. Never had he ever. . . what a fool he’d been.

Water rains on him and he’s so battered it hurts. It’s just water, but it inflicts damage. Water rains on him and he wishes it might wash him down the drain with the soap scum from his unrecognizable body. He braces himself on the tile wall in front of him. There are so many things he is supposed to think about right now, but all he sees is the boy as he shivers in his bad dreams.

When he emerges from the bathroom, Carrie sits on the couch in the living area of his guest quarters. He can’t guess how long she’s waited. He took forever in the shower, or so it seemed. Time has lost meaning. _That’s what happens when you’re tortured, dumbass,_ he thinks glibly. She looks at him with a mix of patience and expectance. He’s wrapped in a thick, white robe that he pulls tighter around himself.

“They put you next door to me. I let myself in,” she explains. _Leave it to Carrie to help her fucking self_. “Have you eaten?” Her voice is soft, concerned. He remembers the ferocity of her embrace on the airstrip and recoils in shame.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he lies. She frowns and gets up to paw through the refrigerator. He stares at the gash on her forehead, remembering how panicked she’d been in the car when she saw Redmond, sliced through the neck with glass from the window. Saul had put his arms around her and told her to calm herself. He’d shushed her and held her until she was stable, terrified because it felt so good to finally have a task, a purpose, to be caring for someone else, to have his worthless, foolish arms around Carrie.

“Well, I don’t know about homemade chicken soup,” she says, her voice muffled by the fridge. “I might have a can in my apartment, but it’s no Jewish penicillin.”

“Fuck it, Carrie,” he grumbles. “I said I’m fine.”

She ignores him entirely. “Okay, we have eggs and bread and some beer, unless you want me to defrost some chicken?”

“God no,” he mutters. “I’ll just take a beer.” She’s satisfied with this and pops caps off two bottles. They meander back to the couch and perch on opposite ends.

“You talk to Mira?” She asks.

“Yeah.”

“She okay?”

“What do you think?” He scowls, but not at Carrie, straight ahead at some random point on the wall. For a couple minutes they are quiet, sipping their beers.

“You gonna forgive me, Saul?”

He clenches his jaw and stares straight ahead. He can’t recall if Carrie has ever seen him cry. He does not think she has and he doesn’t want her to see it now. He shoves his bottle into his mouth and sucks deeply on the alcohol. He needs to say something, so he says, “You saved my life out there. Wasn’t pretty. Nothing to forgive.”

“But there is,” she says. “You don’t even know the half of it.”

“Carrie,” he starts and suddenly feels so tired. He could collapse and sleep like a child in her arms right there.

“Saul,” she whispers and moves a few inches closer, puts her hand on his arm. “When you were with Haquanni, when he shot Aayan. I ordered the kill. I was emotional. Irrational. Quinn stopped it, stopped me.”

Saul looks at her. He wonders if she’s concussed from the wound on her head. _She would’ve seen a medic. She must’ve seen a medic. Right?_ “Is that so?” He brushes a lock of her hair off her face.

“I thought it was what you would want. What you would have done, if it was me with Haquanni. Is it?”

He considers the question, considers all the hidden tunnels within it. He doesn’t want to break down in front of Carrie. Out of all the things she’s seen. . . “Carrie, we make the best decisions with the information we have at any given point in time. I don’t know what I would have done.” His answer is almost honest, or at least he tells himself it is as he puts his hand over hers.

“I don’t even know what’s right any more,” her chin quivers. “I spoke to Mira and she begged me to get you home safe. She said. . .”

“What? What did Mira say?”

“She said she loved you, and she said she thought I did too.”

“Yeah?” Saul watches tears stream out of Carrie’s eyes and down her cheeks. He has an impulse to catch one on his finger and suck on the salt of it, but he doesn’t.

Her shoulders shudder. “I’m just so glad you’re alive. Please, Saul. Please be glad too.” She leans onto his shoulder and he winces at the pain in his muscle there, but he does not move away from her. He smells a stale, metallic tang waft from the gash on her head. He follows this scent to the oil of her scalp, the salty almost curried flavor or her unwashed flesh. She hasn’t had a shower prior to coming to tend to him. Her odor mingles with the perfume of his soap and he’s suddenly, irrationally, profoundly grateful to be alive.


End file.
